Where Liberalism Is Alive and Well!

Day: June 1, 2010

So really, it’s photo ops that we really need, huh, idiot media. It’s crazy to me how so many in the media will come right out and admit that there isn’t much the White House can do that it isn’t already doing, but the President needs to show us he cares – give us a good photo-op, maybe some crocodile tears. It plays right into the media’s obsession with public opinion, moods, the finger-in-the-wind mentality. Joe Scarborough just said he wants to see theatrics, he came right out and proved my point that it’s all about the theatrics. Maureen Dowd and others wrote about the same subject this weekend. How is it that the media can make this about Obama when the real story is how we got to this point. What caused this bullshit? Bob Cesca pointed us to this post from Balloon Juice which summed up a lot of my feelings. (emphasis mine)

Look, I know that we face many difficult challenges. A lot of things have gone wrong and more will go wrong. This is to be expected because Republicans have been in charge for most of the last four decades.

Do you really think that you could have Anti-Government Republicans in charge for 30 plus years and actively working to destroy the infrastructure of government without causing system failures? If you do, then you are living in candy land (or a tea infused lotus dream).

The oil spill in the gulf is is just another result of snorting deregulation fairy dust with a Markets-Are-God hi-ball chaser night after night for decades. When you let industry capture regulators and dismantle effective governance, you guarantee a catastrophic failure. The spill is evidence of this, so was that mining disaster in West Virginia, same thing when it comes to that financial meltdown and the same thing will be true when the next system fails.

And when it does, like idiots, we will not blame the failed philosophy of the modern Conservative movement. Nope, we will blame President Obama, liberals and Democrats—because that is what we are used to doing. More than that, we will ignore facts and worry whether or not the optics of the response are right. We will all ask: is he yelling loud enough yet?

The idiot media just plays right along with it. I’ve certainly heard a few news reports about the deregulation and coziness with regulators that lead to this mess but for the most part the media has devolved into it’s process, political implication mode. I’m glad that President Obama isn’t about theatrics, even though I seem to remember his opponents (both dem and rep) trying to paint him as ONLY about theatrics, giving a good speech etc. That is campaign mode, when speeches…..well, that’s what you do when you are trying to get elected and President Obama did it very well. Governing is quite different. President Reagan ushered in the era of photo ops, stage craft, Hollywood, strategically place props such as military officers, babies, American flags, victims of whatever tragedy is current. Subsequent administrations including Clinton continued that tradition and took it to new levels. President Bush, of course, took it to its logical conclusion with his Mission Accomplished photo-op that will live on as an example of how stagecraft really is fake, Xanax for the masses. Now I know that if President Obama were down there everyday, screaming at the cameras, giving the press its photo-op, that they would accuse him of using the tragedy for a photo-op, for political purposes. I can just hear the outcry from the Republicans and Hamsher and the gang about how he is all symbolism, he should be back at the White House taking care of business. It doesn’t really matter what the president does, the media will find something to criticize the him for – always about process. Hell, they get all worked up about the man going to see his daughter play soccer without them, damn, they missed a fucking photo-op.

Some advice to President Obama from Extreme Liberal – fuck em, keep doing your job, stay focused on the important issues, don’t cave in to the idiot media. They don’t have your best interests at heart. It’s very similar to listening to Republicans giving campaign advice to Democrats, I don’t think they are really too concerned about you. That symbolism bullshit is for the simple-minded, mostly the media, getting shit done is for the rest of us. I always want to say to assholes like Ed Henry, Wolf Blitzer or Joe Scarborough….when you get elected president, you come talk to me….until then, piss off. These assholes pretend like they know more than everyone, they are the real authorities and the president must bow to their gathering of opinions with a 4.7% margin of error. They decide what is most important for the president to do, not the person who actually ran and was elected President of the United States of America. I’ve said it before, I would love it if the president didn’t run again, take the wind out of the sails of the “what political implications will this have for 2012” crowd.